Two rows of products can appear on your cart page. Cart recommendations shows products your shoppers buy together with what’s already in the cart. Cart outlet picks shows products on sale.
You will learn #
- What each row shows, and where its products come from
- How to switch the rows on and choose where they appear
- What to do if your cart page uses the block Cart
- Why a row can stay empty
Before you begin #
- The rows use the pairs from Frequently bought together. Tendlio works out from your orders which products are bought together, and the product page row and both cart rows use the same pairs. The product page row doesn’t have to be on. If the pairs have never been built, switching on either cart row starts the first build. How to show frequently bought together products explains what the pairs need.
- Check what your cart page is built with. The rows place themselves on the classic WooCommerce cart. If your cart page uses the block Cart, you place them with a shortcode (see below), and the panel tells you so once you switch a row on.
- Look at your cart before you rely on the rows. They show on your storefront, so how they fit depends on your theme.
Open the settings #
- In your WordPress admin, open Tendlio → Storefront. The Recommendations tab opens first.
- Scroll down to Cart recommendations. Cart outlet picks is the next panel.
Switch on cart recommendations #
- Turn on Enable cart recommendations. The rest of the panel’s settings appear once the switch is on.
- Under Position, choose where the row sits: Below the list of cart items (recommended), In the cart totals area (where cross-sells show), or Shortcode only (I’ll place it myself). To see where each spot is, click Preview the layout.
- Under Heading, type the title shoppers see above the row. It starts as “You might also like”. If you clear the field, the row shows without a title.
- Under Slider layout, set how many cards are Visible on desktop and Visible on mobile. Products in slider is how many products the row holds. They start at 6, 2 and 8.
- Click Save settings.
Each item in the cart has its own list of products bought together with it, and the row collects from all of those lists. A product near the top of an item’s list, or on the lists of several items, gets a higher place in the row. Products that are already in the cart never appear.
Switch on cart outlet picks #
Cart outlet picks is a second row, for products on sale. A discount from Auto outlet or Manual outlet counts, and so does a sale price you set in WooCommerce.
- Turn on Enable cart outlet picks. Its other settings appear once the switch is on.
- Under Position, choose the same spot as the recommendations if you want this row right below them.
- Under Heading, type the title. It starts as “On sale, and goes with your cart”.
- Under Minimum discount, set the smallest discount a product needs to appear, for example 20 for products that are 20% off or more. At 0, where it starts, any sale price counts. Products with variations skip the minimum: any sale price on them counts, because they have no single discount to compare.
- Set the Slider layout and click Save settings.
The row starts with products on sale that shoppers buy together with the items in the cart. If there aren’t enough of those to fill it, the row adds other products on sale, first from the same categories as the items in the cart, then from the rest of your store. It skips the products the Cart recommendations row already shows.
In Advanced mode, Match breadth changes where the products come from:
- Strict: bought-together only (may show nothing): only products on sale that are bought together with the items in the cart. If none of them is on sale, the row doesn’t appear.
- Balanced: bought-together, then on sale in the same categories: the setting the row starts with. Despite its name, it also takes products on sale from the rest of your store when the cart’s categories run out.
- Wide: anything on sale in related categories: skips the bought-together products. It starts with products on sale from the cart’s categories, then adds products on sale from the rest of your store.
If you want the row to show only products that go with the cart, choose Strict. The row then stays empty more often, because it has fewer products to choose from.
If your cart page uses the block Cart #
The block Cart doesn’t have the spots the classic cart has, so a row set to one of those spots never appears on it. While a row is on and your cart page uses the block Cart, the row’s panel says “Heads up: your cart page uses the block Cart, so this row won’t appear there automatically.”
- Under Position, choose Shortcode only (I’ll place it myself) and click Save settings.
- Click Copy next to the shortcode:
[tendlio_cart_recommendations]for the recommendations,[tendlio_outlet_cart]for the outlet picks. - Edit your cart page, add a Shortcode block where you want the row, for example below the Cart block, paste the shortcode, and save the page.
Both shortcodes take two optional settings, limit for how many products load and title for the heading on that page, for example [tendlio_cart_recommendations limit="6" title="You might also like"].
The same steps help when your theme or page builder skips the standard cart spots. Tendlio notices this too: it watches whether your cart page loads the spot you chose for each row. If it hasn’t seen that spot load for a week, counted from when you switched the row on or from when it last showed, the row’s card on the Growth engine and Sales lift pages reads On, but not showing.
Check the rows as a shop manager #
When you’re logged in as a shop manager and Cart recommendations has nothing to show, your cart page shows a note headed “Only you can see this (store admin).” The note says why the row is empty, for example:
- The pairs haven’t been built yet. The note links to the page where you build them.
- Nobody has bought the products in this cart together with anything else yet, or they haven’t sold enough to get their own list of pairs.
- Pairs were found, but none of those products can be shown right now, for example because they’re sold out or hidden.
Shoppers never see the note. An empty cart shows nothing at all, not even the note. Cart outlet picks has no note: when it has nothing to show, it stays hidden.
Keep products out of the rows #
- Each row has its own Exclude categories. Products in the categories you tick never appear in that row, and ticking a category includes its subcategories.
- To keep one product out of every recommendation row, tick it on Products & insights and click Hide from recommendations. The Boost button next to it moves a product up in the rows it belongs to, but doesn’t add it to other rows. Boost and Hide explains both.
The icon in the round add-to-cart button, whether the rows show sold-out products, and your own CSS are set once for every row, at the bottom of the Storefront page. How to show frequently bought together products explains those three settings.
Why the rows work this way #
Why a row can stay empty #
Cart recommendations needs pairs: if nobody has bought the products in this cart together with anything else, there’s nothing to suggest yet. The row fills in on its own as those orders come in and the pairs are rebuilt. A product also needs a few sales of its own (3 units in the last 12 months unless you’ve changed the minimum) before Tendlio makes its list of pairs, so a cart of new or slow products shows nothing yet.
Cart outlet picks needs products on sale. Set to Strict, it needs products on sale that are also bought together with the items in the cart.
Both rows also leave out products shoppers can’t buy right now: products hidden from your catalog, products that can’t be bought, and sold-out products, unless you’ve turned on Show sold-out products in the rows.
See what the rows earn #
Once a row has sold something, its card on the Growth engine page shows what it brought in. For the details, click See report at the top of the Storefront page.
Additional resources #
- How to show frequently bought together products on your product pages: where the pairs come from, and the settings every row shares.
- Cart recommendations show nothing
- A storefront widget doesn’t show up
- How to set up Auto outlet to clear your dead stock: the discounts the outlet row shows.
- Measuring what the widgets earn
Frequently asked questions #
Do I need Frequently bought together switched on? #
No. The cart rows use the same pairs, and switching on a cart row is enough to have them built and kept up to date.
Can both rows show the same product? #
No, when the outlet row sits below the recommendations: it skips the products the recommendations row already shows.